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Home Run Distances

This is not a shot at the Cardinals, because it seems to happen everywhere.

But does anybody get the feeling that when they announce a home run’s distance, visiting players are always docked about 10 percent? Reggie Sanders’ shot in the first inning tonight landed in about the third row behind the visitors bullpen. It was a monster homer, and the 445-foot destimated distance was likely accurate.

Chris Burke’s homer in the seventh, however, looked to MY eye to be even more massive. It banged off the facade in left field, just below the lower deck and just to the left of the Big Mac Land sign. That’s a rocket shot, my friends. And the estimated distance? Four hundred twelve feet. C’mon. Something tells me that if the names on those homers had been reversed, so would have been the estimated distances.

Again, this isn’t a Cardinals thing. You see it everywhere. I’ve seen it in the reverse direction at other parks. And besides, I may really just be imagining it, and there may be a chart that shows that those two HRs were exactly what they were announced to be.

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I think it was in Three Nights in August that I read that Tony had the numbers on the radar gun juiced a little so our pitchers would look up at the scoreboard and see they were throwing 94mph and get a boost of confidence when they were actually more like 90-91.

I bet the thing with the homers is true, although I’d be more inclined to say that Reggie’s shot might have been increased. It wasn’t to a particularyly deep part of the field. 445 feet, maybe, on a bounce.

I raised a brow too when I saw the numbers, but only briefly. That being said, Burke’s shot was a bomb. I have two hypothesis and one is that Burke’s ball was SO down the line that it wouldn’t have looked as big to the gap. The other is that Burke lofted his ball more than Reggie did and Sanders’ trajectory might have been more suited for pure raw distance. Those measurements are estimated on the premise that there would be no obstruction to the ball’s flight, so while Burke’s ball looked bigger, maybe Mr. October the II’s blast would’ve traveled farther.

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